Saturday, March 04, 2006

Coming along nicely

Apologies to those of you for who've known about these guys for aeons, but this album is as mad as a box of hyperactive cane toads and rather more nutritious.

Banjos! Bass harmonicas! Strings! Shouting! What more could you ask for? 'Hold Yr Terror Close' possesses that Moe Tucker pout that the Moldy Peaches always seem to be aiming for, while 'Feelgood By Numbers' is Vince Guaraldi reincarnated in Brighton. 'Everyone's A V.I.P. To Someone' is simply swoonsome, there's no other word. The whole package sounds like the Portsmouth Sinfonia playing 'Reward' by The Teardrop Explodes while The Langley Schools Music Project interjects the "hai! hai!" bit from 'Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots pt. 1' by The Flaming Lips. Or, to take it to another level, the brass band on 'Jugband Blues' from Pink Floyd's 'Saucerful Of Secrets' copping a feel off the people who yell "SOUL FINGER!!!" on 'Soul Finger' by the Bar-Kays.

good taste is better than bad taste, but bad taste is better than no taste

So what’s all this Cultural Snow business, then?

“The writing itself is no big thing. I mean I like writing. It’s even relaxing for me. But the content is a real zero. Pointless in fact.”“What do you mean?”“I mean, for instance, you do the rounds of fifteen restaurants in one day, you eat one bite of each dish and leave the rest untouched. You think that makes sense?”“But you couldn’t very well eat everything, could you?”“Of course not. I’d drop dead in three days if I did. And everyone would think I was an idiot. I’d get no sympathy whatsoever.”“So what choice have you got?” she said.“I don't know. The way I see it, it’s like shoveling snow. You do it because somebody’s got to, not because it's fun.”“Shoveling snow, huh?” she mused.“Well, you know, cultural snow,” I said.—from Dance Dance Dance, by Haruki Murakami (translated by Alfred Birnbaum)